Best Project Management Software – Basecamp vs. Asana & Others

To help simplify your choice, we reviewed four of the top project management software options for small businesses. Each of these packages are current (released within the last few years), cloud-based and feature tools that are great for small teams.

We recommend basecamp as the best project management software for small teams. It has the best interface for discussing projects, sharing files, scheduling appointments or due dates and the best tools for project managers to oversee work.

$50/month adds permission levels and an unlimited number of guest accounts, such as clients.

Task Management

Some advanced features.

Automatically send out tasks when a project moves onto the next step.

Save project templates.

Many advanced features.

With 3rd party add-ons you can track time and estimate costs.

Save project templates.

Basic Task Management.

Some advanced features.

With a 3rd party add-on you can track time.

Save project templates.

Collaboration

(Communication & File Management)

No communication tools, but you can attach files to projects or tasks.

You can have multiple discussions on the project homepage and add files inline with the discussion.

Integrate 3rd party tools for instant messaging.

Displays files of many different types and gives handy tools to sort through files.

Add comments to cards (tasks) and attach files inline with the discussion.

Add comments to tasks, also add attach files inline with the discussion.

Integrate 3rd party tools for instant messaging.

Calendars

Team-wide “master” calendar you can filter for each member.

Team-wide “master” calendar.

Calendars for specific projects.

Custom calendars for anything else.

No Calendars

Personal Calendars and project-specific calendars.

Advanced Features

No advanced features.

Integrate 3rd party tools for accounting, bug tracking, Gantt charts and more

No advanced features.

Integrate 3rd party tools for accounting, bug tracking, Gantt charts and more

Customer Service Options

No phone/email support. But you can fill out a support ticket.

Help Articles, FAQs and video tutorials

No phone/email support. But you can fill out a support ticket, or tweet short questions.

Help Articles, FAQs and videos

No phone/email support.

Help Articles

No phone/email support. But you can fill out a support ticket.

Help Articles

Mobile App

Android or iOS

Android or iOS

Android or iOS

Android or iOS

Why We Choose Basecamp For Small Teams

Email is how most small groups collaborate before they start using project management software. It’s how they discuss project details, share files, schedule appointments, etc.

Can this software replace email? This was a key question we asked when reviewing these project management software packages.

Good project management software should be able to replace email completely as a collaborative tool. It should have all the necessary features (discussion tools, file sharing, scheduling, etc.) and should be simple and intuitive enough to be used by all members.

This is why we choose basecamp as the best project management software for small teams. Not only does it have all the features essential for small teams, but the tools are very strong. Basecamp displays your uploaded files, allows you to start discussions and collaborate on text documents directly on the project page. This makes it easy to stay organized and makes it more likely team members will actually use the software instead of email.

Secondly, Basecamp does a great job of filtering information so you only have to see what’s relevant to you. If you want, however, a project manager can easily view the progress of individual employees or the team as a whole.

When Basecamp Is Not The Best Project Management Software

Basecamp excels at task management and collaboration for teams. However, because of the time it takes to set up a project, it may feel inefficient for drawing or visualizing small projects.

Trello is great for very small teams (2 to 3 people) who want a tool for planning projects. It’s basically an online whiteboard you can use to draw out projects. Trello is not good at managing tasks or monitoring progress on a team level, but it’s flexible design makes it great for visualizing project steps.

Insightly combines CRM software with project management and is great for small teams who work on a lot of projects at once (more than 10 or 15). Unlike Basecamp, there’s no hard limit on the number of projects you can have at one time. Also, the Insightly project menu has excellent tools for sorting through projects.

Trello vs. Basecamp vs. Asana vs. Insightly: In-depth Review

Ease of Use

Trello: One of the easiest project management apps to use. The design is very simple, like an online whiteboard. There’s a single “main” page and it just takes one click to start drawing out a new project. You can click to view latest updates and discussions, but otherwise these details are hidden from the main page. Your projects line up side-by-side, so it’s easy to see everything you have going on. If you have more than 10 projects, however, this can get cluttered.

Basecamp: A little more complex than Trello, but also a lot more powerful. Adding a project takes a few extra steps. Once created, however, the project menu gives you a detailed overview. The first thing you see are the latest updates and discussions. To-do lists are located at the bottom. Basecamp also has several tabs on the top menu that give you different “views” of your project(s). You can view a calendar of upcoming tasks, your personal to-dos or the to-dos of any employee. You can also use the “Everything” tab to search through all files, discussions and more.

Insightly: A simple, easy to navigate system. The project tab is fairly simple, though a little convoluted. “Milestones” and “tasks” are separated. Also, there’s no easy way to add or reorder the steps of your project.

Asana is designed like a desktop. There’s a series of windows you can open, close or switch between. Like Trello, the details of each project (i.e. latest updates, discussion box, attached files, etc.) are hidden until you click on a task. This keeps the layout simple when you first open it, but finding a specific file or discussion can be difficult.

Best Project Management Software Free Options

Yes. Trello has a free option for an unlimited number of users with an unlimited number of projects. It has most of the same features as the paid version except admin positions and permission levels. So, in other words, you can’t control what your members can view and edit.

Basecamp: No, but there’s a fully functional 60 day free trial.

Yes. The free version of Insightly has most of the same features as the paid version but you can only add 3 users. You can have an unlimited number of projects, but but only 2,500 records, which includes things like contacts, tasks, projects, organizations notes and emails.

Asana: Yes. You can have up to 15 users on the free version with unlimited projects, but like Trello, there’s no permission levels. You can’t control what users can view and edit.

Best Project Management Software Paid Options

For a team of 8 people, these packages range from $240 to $670 per year. The cheapest option is basecamp at $240 per year, however there is a 10 project limit at this level. Trello is in the middle at $360 and Insightly and Asana are the most expensive at $600 to $670 per year. For teams of 2 to 3 people you can probably use the free version of each app (except Basecamp, since there isn’t a free version.)

Trello: If you have more than 7 or 8 team members, you’ll probably want to update Trello for the permission levels. The cost is $45/user/year, or about $360/year for a team of 8.

Basecamp gives you an unlimited number of users and instead charges you based on your number of projects and storage space:

$20/month for 10 active projects and 3 GB storage

$50/month for 40 active projects and 15 GB storage

Since most small teams can probably get by with 10 active projects, Basecamp is the most cost effective, at $240/year. Unfortunately there’s no middle ground between 10 and 40 projects, so if you need more than 10 active projects, you’ll have to pay $600/year.

Upgrading Insightly gets you past the 3-user limit. It costs $7 per user per month. That’s about $670/year for a team of 8.

Asana: Like Trello, you can add administrator privileges and permission levels once you upgrade. This costs $50/month for up to 15 members, or $600/year.

Best Project Management Software Task Management / To-do lists

Each of these packages have basic task management tools: You can create lists of tasks, define who is responsible for which tasks, and set due dates. They differ, however, in their advanced features and ease of use. Trello is the best software for drawing to-do lists, but Basecamp far excels at managing tasks.

Trello: To-do lists are at the core of the system. You can instantly draw out projects step-by-step and edit or rearrange them with a single click. This makes it great for planning projects. It is not great, however, at managing tasks. There’s no simple way to view your assigned tasks. To do this, you have to scroll through all the projects and find which cards have your initials tagged on them. This can get confusing if you have lots of team members and / or projects with a lot of detail. Also, there’s no advanced task management features like time tracking or expense tracking.

Basecamp isn’t as great as Trello for quickly drawing and visualizing projects, but the task management is very strong. When team members are assigned tasks, they’ll show up on a personalized dashboard, so they don’t have to sort through the clutter to find what they should be working on. If you want to re-use the steps of a project, basecamp lets you save details as a template so you don’t have to re-type them later on. Also, you can integrate 3rd party tools to track time and expenses for each task.

There’s no quick way to draw out projects in Insightly. It’s also not very easy to edit or re-order project steps. It does, however, have fairly strong task management. You can set up a project so that once a stage is finished, all the tasks of the next stage are automatically sent out to employees. None of the other software we reviewed have this feature. Insightly also lets you save project templates, but there is no time or expense tracking.

Like Trello, Asana is centered around the to-do list. When you open a project, it appears at the center of the screen where you can quickly add, edit or re-order tasks. But unlike Trello, it also has pretty strong task management.

Like Basecamp, when you assign tasks to employees they’ll show up on a personalized dashboard. Also, you can save project templates and integrate 3rd party tools for time tracking and expense tracking.

All of these programs allow you to attach files to projects, which is ideal if you have things like images or spreadsheets to share with your team members. Some also have tools for team members to chat or discuss project details. We found that Basecamp has the best way of organizing files and discussions.

Trello: Each card (task) has an activity stream of recent changes, text comments, files and subtasks. If you have a lot of steps in your project, however, it could be tough to track down a particular file or conversation.

Basecamp takes a different approach and places the activity stream on the project home page. This makes it much easier to view recent changes, open files or add to a discussion. You can start multiple discussions and give each a unique title.

Basecamp also has the most sophisticated file management system. Although you can post files inline during a discussion, or add them to tasks or events, they’re still stored in a centralized place. You can view all files on a project homepage, or click the “Everything” tab to view all files on your system. Basecamp also has a built-in text document editor, which can be handy. One key downside, however, is that you can’t upload files from Box or Dropbox. The other packages we reviewed support this integration.

Insightly doesn’t have any built-in communication tools, however every project has a unique email address you can cc to add the email to the project. Also, you can attach files to projects or tasks.

Asana is very similar to Trello in how each task has an activity stream of recent changes, comments, files and subtasks. Likewise, if you have lots of tasks, it could be tough to track down a particular file or conversation.

Best Project Management Software Calendars

A calendar that shows upcoming project deadlines, or personal to-dos, can be very helpful for team collaboration. Some applications also give you other ways to visualize deadlines and to-dos. Of the four we reviewed, Basecamp has the best calendars and deadline views.

Trello: No Calendars.

Basecamp: Each project has its own calendar with due dates and events. You can also view a team-wide calendar that shows the schedule for every member and every project. You can also create custom calendars, which can be helpful for personal planning or saving non-project related dates, like office parties or holidays.

There’s no personal calendar of your assigned tasks, but you can click on the “Me” tab and view your open to-dos and other key information. The “Everyone” tab lets you view the latest activities and open to-dos of specific team members, which can be great for project managers.

Insightly provides a team-wide calendar, which you can filter for individual team members.

Asana creates calendars for projects as well as a personal calendar.

Best Project Management Software Advanced Features

Each of these packages gives you the ability to add permission levels and / or administrator accounts (at least on the paid versions). Also, all them except Insightly allow you to create guest accounts for people like clients to view projects, but not edit them. Here’s the other advanced features each package offers:

Trello: No advanced features.

If you include 3rd party add-ons, then Basecamp has many advanced features. You can integrate tools for time-tracking, accounting, bug tracking and Gantt charts, just to name a few. You can check out the full list here.

Insightly is also a CRM, so you can link projects to clients, organizations or opportunities. Also, it’s not exactly an advanced feature but Insightly’s project menu has excellent tools for sorting through projects. You can search, filter by responsible user, category or project status (open or closed) or use an alphabetical tool to quickly jump to projects. This makes it ideal for teams with lots of projects (more than 10 or 15). Besides that, there’s no advanced features like time-tracking or reporting tools.

Asana: Like Basecamp, you can integrate 3rd party tools for things like time-tracking, bug tracking, Gantt charts, and more. Here’s the full list of add-ons.

Best Project Management Software Customer Service Options

None of these project management software packages have phone or email support. All except Trello, however, have support tickets you can fill out and submit to the staff. Basecamp also has twitter support for short questions. Here’s what else they offer in the way of customer support:

Trello has a help resource web page with articles separated by category. You can also type in a question and search for relevant articles.

Basecamp: A very detailed help resource center with FAQs, articles, videos and a search bar to sort through all of it.

Insightly has a pretty simple help center. There’s searchable FAQs and video tutorials.

Asana: Searchable help resource center with articles and videos. The articles are very in depth and well made.

Mobile App

Each of the project management software packages we reviewed have mobile editions for Android or iOS. They generally let you view all task and project details but give you limited editing abilities. None of the apps have offline support, which means you have to be connected to the internet to use most of the features.

The Bottom Line

The most important question to ask when looking for project management software is if the software will be more efficient than your old methods. If it isn’t, then there’s no point in making the switch.

Packages like Trello and Asana are good platforms for drawing out projects. They also let you add comments and files to each task. In theory, this should be great for teams since it places the details somewhere everyone can see them. But in practice, this can make the platform cluttered and disorganized. You might spend just as much time browsing tasks to locate files as you would searching through your inbox.

What Basecamp does differently is that it puts everything in one place. On the project homepage, you can view all the relevant files, discussions, text documents and more. You can still attach files to tasks or events, but they’ll also appear on the project homepage as well as the “Everything” page.

It’s these one-click “views” and sorting tools that make Basecamp such a powerful application and actually likely to replace your email inbox as your team’s project management tool.

About the Author

Jeremy Marsan is a business analyst and staff writer for Fit Small Business currently specializing in small business healthcare issues and product reviews. When not helping small business owners he enjoys many artistic projects, including music performance/recording, blogging, creative writing and carpentry.

I was thinking about trying out BaseCamp but I am really bad with technologies and after reading this review ( http://www.insidetheapp.com/basecamp-app-review/ ) where was said that the app might be hard to use for first time users. I am really bad with this kind of stuff so I am not sure about bying BaseCamp. Is it really that hard to use it for newbies?

In my experience, Basecamp was one of the easiest project management programs to use. It was far easier than Asana – and about the same as Trello (Trello is far simpler w/ fewer features, so it’s naturally pretty easy.) Insightly is a bit less intuitive for project management, since it’s primarily a CRM.

I’d say the biggest plus of Basecamp is the interface doesn’t flood you with buttons. It’s very well-organized, and easy to find where you need to go.

If you’re brand new to project management there will be a learning curve, but I think that’s true no matter which program you choose.

We’re a gaggle of volunteers and starting a brand new scheme in our community. Your website provided us with helpful info to work on. You’ve performed an impressive process and our entire community will be thankful to you.

Hi Jeremy, Great article, very interesting read. Thought that the task management tool I use day to day deserved a mention… Dooster. It’s super simple to use and I would rate it very highly next to those you reviewed. Take a look! Best, Robyn

Excellent post Jeremy. Inspired from the list above of project management software, I would like to share our own fully scalable and customizable Project Management platform for small, medium and even large scale company http://www.devtracker.devdigital.com

I suggest Twproject, I’ve tested most of the ones you mentioned but, Basecamp for example is really to basic, even if we are a small team, we need report as well. In the end we started using Twproject which works perfectly for us, It is very easy to use and at the same time it offers some key features for structuring work, for example a editable in place Gantt that helps us changing our project on the go without effort, we are a small group with a lot of projects 🙂 In case it may help this is the link to get it http://twproject.com

We can’t add files inline to the discussion – it gets added to the card, yes, but in a central area rather than to a specific comment, so it seems a little difficult to work out which attachment needs to be viewed in which context / version.

Just for this and the fact that you can’t look at tasks properly across people, I would probably switch to Asana. Frankly I would prefer Basecamp, but for a start up approach, I would prefer a free option 🙂

Basecamp does have a free 60 day trial, but after that it’s $20/month. Asana’s free version is always free, and they let’s you have up to 15 members plus most of the main features (there’s just no permission levels, guest access or premium dashboards).

Asana is a little more cluttered and more complicated than Basecamp, but if your team is good with learning with new programs, then it should be manageable.

I assume the other program you’re talking about is Trello? I agree that these are some of their weaknesses. Trello is not particularly great for discussions, nor for managing tasks.

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